Rehana Rossouw
THEY’VE been labelled reactionaries, racists and gravy-train wannabes, but the group of former United Democratic Front activists, church leaders, youth leaders and unionists behind the “December 1 Movement” believes the political salvation of coloureds lies in their hands.
They are gathering in Cape Town this weekend to fine-tune plans for their launch, the culmination of months of debate, some of which has raged in the local press. There have been sharp skirmishes between African National Congress leaders and the proponents of a coloured movement and at times the debate degenerated into personal attacks.
For some, the movement is seen as a betrayal on the part of people who should be working from within political parties to correct weaknesses in addressing the fears and aspirations of coloureds.
The ANC provincial leadership elected last month will address the implications of the movement at a bosberaad they have planned for November 2. The National Party, which enjoys the support of the majority of coloureds, has remained mum.
The movement was named to commemorate the emancipation of coloured slaves on December 1 1834. At this stage, the group is not willing to identify themselves – they will elect a committee on Sunday which will speak on their behalf.
In discussion documents drafted by the movement’s proponents and obtained by the Mail & Guardian, some of their objectives emerge. The coloured community has confounded political analysts and dismayed activists by voting for the NP in the 1994 and 1996 elections. Former UDF activists believe this is a case of “the chickens coming home to roost” – a consequence of activists’ inability to understand the community.
Many had believed that the presence of coloureds at anti-apartheid marches and rallies in the past would translate into a “vote for freedom” along with other oppressed communities in South Africa.
In post-apartheid South Africa, coloureds have been used by mainstream political parties as voting fodder, and their ongoing fears about issues like affirmative action and government allocation of resources like housing and education are not being addressed.
The movement’s proponents believe a “safe environment” has to be created outside political parties to debate solutions to problems coloureds experience. They are also offering a haven to people who believe coloureds are a distinct racial group and would like a vehicle to promote their culture.
Some of the objectives proposed in the documents are to draw coloured people back into the political and economic mainstream; to develop non-racialism in the Western Cape; to begin asserting pride among coloureds in the Cape with the aim of including them in the new South African nation; and to challenge other parties to change their political orientation in the province.
The group is still debating the organisation’s character: whether it should be established as a political party, social movement, pressure group or cultural movement. This issue should be finalised on Sunday.
Ironically, some of the inspiration for the movement’s name is drawn from Deputy President Thabo Mbeki’s speech at the adoption of the draft Constitution earlier this year.
“I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence and they who, as a people, perished in the result,” Mbeki said.
“Today, as a country, we keep an audible silence about these ancestors of the generations that live, fearful to admit the horror of a former deed, seeking to obliterate from our memories a cruel occurrence which, in its remembering, should teach us not and never to be inhuman again.”
In the Cape today descendants of the indigenous population, mixed liberally with Caucasians and East Indian slaves, are claiming a unique heritage and recognition that their apartheid-designated label of “coloured” best describes their community.
An argument is made in one of the documents motivating the name of the December 1 Movement, that coloureds were the only nation to experience slavery in South Africa and that the community has not yet come to terms with the trauma it caused. “Our community’s salvation lies in moving from … angst and trauma to our eventual coming to terms with the fact that we are an African people who have emerged at this special point in our nation’s history along a path uniquely ours,” the document reads.
“The experience of slavery was not known to the rest of our nation. The essence of our identity was shaped within this crucible of suffering.”
“We need a movement that will form a bridge along which our people can move from where they are in terms of value and attitudes to where those less burdened by the shackles of history are to be found.